Posts for 'Research'

Videology released the findings of a Forrester Consulting survey yesterday, which studied attitudes toward video advertising among 150 executives at brands, agencies and media companies. There are many interesting findings in the report and one that stands out is that nearly 70% of brands and agencies think it's likely or very likely that agencies will unify the planning of video and TV campaigns within the next 3 years (though note only 52% of media companies believe so).

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A new study from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) released yesterday at CES, revealed that it is still very early days for second screen usage in conjunction with TV programs. The study estimates that 44% of the general population has ever accessed TV program related content on a second screen. This is the group that was surveyed.

Of this group, 42% (or about 18% of the general population) accessed "synchronous" content, which is meant to be consumed with the TV program, such as polls, contests, Twitter feeds, chats, etc.), and 91% (or about 40% of the general population) accessed "asynchronous" content which is meant to be consumed before or after the TV program such as actor or behind-the-scenes info, trivia, webisode viewing and Twitter/Facebook activity.

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Netflix released new research on binge-viewing among its subscribers today, revealing that 61% of them binge-view at least 2-3 episodes every few weeks. The data adds yet more weight to the binge-viewing story line: in September Nielsen found that 88% of Netflix subscribers have watched 3 or more episodes in the same day (70% for Hulu Plus) while research from Piksel found 94% of viewers binging in one way or another. (caveat, there's some apples vs. oranges in comparing the data)

No other company has done more to promote binge-viewing than Netflix. Whereas the phenomenon started with viewers binging past seasons of shows like "Mad Men" or "Breaking Bad," Netflix has shrewdly capitalized by releasing all of its own original episodes at once, making binge-viewing a current season behavior as well. As a result, TV network executives must now ask whether their traditional approach of scheduling new episodes should be revamped.

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There is no doubt the TV industry is changing dramatically, largely due to the rise of online and mobile video viewing. But is it "dying," "imploding" or being "nuked" as some recent tech media headlines assert? No, not yet anyway. As a close observer of all things video, it's just mind-boggling sometimes to see how data is conflated to support distorted conclusions. If your company's product strategy were guided by today's headlines alone, you'd be on a course to disaster.

To help set things straight, Piksel's Alan Wolk has put together a really good slide deck with data debunking 7 of the bigger myths floating around these days (1) cord-cutting is a mass movement, (2) kids ignore mainstream TV, (3) your pay-TV provider is the one forcing you to pay for 800 channels, (4) cutting the cord lets you stick it to the cable company, (5) second screen is all about social TV, (6) TV viewing has decreased and (7) in the future we'll be able to watch TV wherever, whenever and however we want.

See slide deck

Late last week research firm IHS and video ad platform provider Videoplaza released a new report asserting that video content providers need to become "audience architects" - mining their user data to fully capitalize on the shift to programmatic trading of video advertising. The report is based on IHS's forecasts of the Western European video ad business, but many of its conclusions are equally applicable to US-based video content providers.

IHS believes the primary driver of change is the exploding array of video-capable devices, which in Western Europe it forecasts growing from 340 million in 2008 to 1.1 billion in 2017. As video consumption away from TVs increases, and in particular moves to mobile devices, new challenges around limited ad space and lower ad loads have arisen.

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Digitalsmiths has released its quarterly survey on consumer behavior around pay-TV and VOD, finding that consumers are continuing to “cord cheat,” with 48% supplementing their pay-TV subscriptions with OTT services, up from 35% reported in Q2 '13. Most popular for these consumers was Netflix (42%), while for individual movie rentals Redbox kiosks took the lead at 17%.

Digitalsmiths believes cord cheating is a big threat to pay-TV providers and said they must adapt and better support consumer expectations. According to the survey, the top reasons consumers are choosing OTT services like Netflix, Hulu or iTunes are because they are more convenient (53%), cheaper (48%) and allow full season TV viewing (31%).

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New Q3 '13 data from FreeWheel, which was unveiled today at VideoSchmooze, indicates TV Everywhere usage has grown rapidly over the past year.  According to the company's Q3 '13 Video Monetization Report, 14.2% of total ad views in long-form content were delivered via pay-TV operators' authenticated video players, nearly triple their 5% share in Q4 '12.

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Poor quality online video experiences cost brands in numerous ways, according to a new Brightcove survey. 62% of respondents are likely to blame the brand, rather than their ISP or video hosting provider such as YouTube, when encountering poor quality video. In addition, 60% of respondents experiencing poor video quality said it would dissuade them from social engagement with the brand, 57% said they'd be less likely to share a low quality video and 23% said low quality would make them hesitant to purchase from the brand.

The Brightcove survey highlights quality issues with YouTube specifically, which brands have aggressively embraced for its massive reach. But while YouTube offers huge audience potential, 75% of survey respondents reported experiencing buffering and freezing on the site, with 33% saying these problems affect half of the videos they watch. This leads to about 1/3 of viewers experiencing problems abandoning the video rather than waiting for the buffering to stop.

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Video analytics provider BrandAds has released a survey showing that 60% of advertisers believe they can’t adequately measure the impact of their online video ad campaigns using currently available data and tools.

More than 50% of those surveyed also said that existing online video measurement tools are too expensive and create too much operational overhead. Over 80% said they must wait more than 24 hours before getting campaign data results, making it almost impossible to make real-time changes.

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Following the launch of VideoNuze iQ - the hub for video data and analysis - in early October, I'm pleased today to unveil a new feature, our "Expert Series" video interviews. Expert Series are 20-minute video interviews with industry analysts and executives responsible for the critical new video research. So in addition to VideoNuze iQ's own analysis of newly released video research, you'll now also hear directly from the experts themselves.

Kicking off the Expert Series is Jonathan Hurd, Director of Altman Vilandrie & Co., a strategy consulting firm focused exclusively on Telecom, Media and Technology. Jonathan oversees a comprehensive AV & Co. survey of consumer behaviors and attitudes toward traditional and new video services. In this Expert Series interview, Jonathan shares key highlights.

The survey data underscores online video's rapid adoption and benefits, along with Netflix's dominance and the rise of tablet/smartphone viewing. But it also clarifies that, for now, cord-cutters' main motivation is mainly economic. Importantly, the survey also shows the durability of live broadcast TV, even among millennials, along with the appeal of pay-TV subscriptions and TV Everywhere.

The video interview is embedded below and Jonathan's slides are available here. You can connect directly with Jonathan at jhurdATaltvil.com. I welcome your feedback on the new Expert Series format.

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There are all kinds of videos available online these days, but, according to a recent survey by the NY Times Consumer Insights Group, those that entertain are still the most popular for frequent viewers. 78% of survey respondents who watch online video several times per month cited "entertains me/enjoyable" as the reason they watch online video, followed by "makes me laugh" (71%). In third place was "learn something new" (64%).

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Premium video is being more widely distributed over IP networks due to TV Everywhere initiatives. While this means improved viewer satisfaction and new revenue for pay-TV operators, it also means dramatically higher risks of piracy. It's an issue I hear about often and am constantly trying to understand better. A new white paper from software provider Civolution does a nice job of describing the issues and framing potential solutions. It is available for free download here.

According to a recently released study by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and Nielsen, multi-screen advertising will grow from 20% of advertisers' budgets today to nearly 50% in the next three years. While 48% of respondents said they believe multi-screen campaigns are very important in effectively delivering marketing messages, almost twice as many (88%) believe that these types of campaigns will be very important in three years. 

One of the biggest issues for multi-screen advertising is measurement due to a huge gap between existing measurement approaches and how respondents would prefer to measure integrated multi-screen campaigns. 71% of survey respondents said they use a variety of metrics specific to individual screens, but 73% said they would prefer to use just one set of metrics across all screens.

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Here's a good news / bad news story for TV executives closely watching millennials' video consumption habits as a harbinger of what the future may look like. The good news is that, in new research by YuMe and IPG Media Lab, TV shows are still the most popular type of video millennials are watching, cited by 37% of the group.

The bad news however, is that among women 18-24, hours of TV viewing/week was down 10% year-over-year and among men 18-24 it was down 7%. Of note, user-generated content was a close second to TV shows in popularity, cited by 33% of millennials, and ahead of movies (28%), music videos (19%) and news (13%). For low-budget UGC to be vying so closely with expensive TV programming for millennials' attention says a lot about their changing tastes.

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It turns out that football not only drives audience spikes on TV, but also online video advertising and engagement across devices. That's according to Adap.tv which this morning released select data from its video ad marketplace. Adap.tv has found that football has driven an overall 81% increase in video ad opportunities, with a 127% bump in smartphone video ads, 120% on desktops and 22% on tablets. 

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Research firm IHS has updated its forecast for 2013 global TV shipments, now predicting a decline of 5% for the full year. This would be the second consecutive down year, following a 7% falloff in 2012 (I'm confirming whether this is the first time IHS has ever seen consecutive year declines. UPDATE: IHS has confirmed this is the first-ever 2 year consecutive decline). Shipments for 2013 are now estimated at 226.7 million units. IHS believes 2014 shipments will increase by just 1% in 2014 to 229 million units.

IHS analyst Jusy Hong noted that there are a number of reasons for the 2013 decline, but the main ones are global economic weakness and maturity of the TV market in advanced regions. Just last week, IHS released a survey on Smart TVs, showing relatively high awareness, but low purchase intent in the U.S. as price emerged as the top decision-making driver, eclipsing screen size.

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The Web Video Marketing Council (WVMC) has released its 3rd annual report on online video marketing showing that 93% of respondents are using online video for marketing, up from 84% in 2012. Also, 71% said they are increasing their budgets in 2013. The report surveyed over 600 marketing professionals about their use of online video in mostly B2B and some B2C organizations.

One of the more interesting findings was that 60% of marketers are using online video on e-mails, an increase of 8% from 2012. About 82% said that integrating video with email marketing was either “effective” or “very effective” and has had a positive impact on sales and marketing.

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Today I'm pleased to introduce the newest VideoNuze contributor, Jose Alvear, who is a research analyst specializing in the pay-TV and online video industries. Jose has authored research reports on content delivery networks, IPTV, OTT video, cloud-based TV and social TV for leading firms in the industry. Jose is currently working on a book focusing on the disruption of the TV industry.

Survey: Price Sensitivity and Connected TV Devices Cloud Picture for Smart TV Adoption

by Jose Alvear

Researcher IHS released survey results earlier this week suggesting a muted forecast for Smart TVs amid rising consumer price sensitivity and a proliferation of inexpensive connected TV devices. IHS found that 73% of U.S. consumers are not interested in buying a Smart TV in the next 12 months. IHS said that once consumers are educated about Smart TVs and learn more about their features, interest does increase. Overall awareness of Smart TVs is high, at 86%, with 30% expressing purchase intent over the next 12 months.

But how intent translates into actual purchase is always tenuous and in this case, particularly so. That's because IHS also found that price has now vaulted to the top position as a driver for TV purchases, surpassing "screen size," which had been cited by more than 50% of respondents in 2012.

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I'm pleased to present the 201st edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. This week we're joined by special guest Ramesh Sitaraman, professor at University of Massachusetts, Amherst and an Akamai fellow. Ramesh and Akamai's S.S. Krishnan released an academic research paper this week studying the effectiveness of online video advertising (I wrote about it here and Colin here).

In the podcast, Ramesh adds color to his findings. Among other things, he discusses mid-rolls' high completion rates, time-of-day's low impact on completion, geographic viewership differences and abandonment of ads vs. slow-starting content.

Listen in the learn more!

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A new academic research paper on video advertising effectiveness, written in partnership with Akamai, shows among other things that mid-roll video ads have the highest average completion rate at 96.8%, followed by pre-rolls with 74.3% and post-rolls at 44.7%.

Even when controlling for other factors like an ad's length or the video itself, mid-rolls continued to have the highest completion rate. The data underscores the value of an already engaged viewer. The new research aligns with prior research from FreeWheel which also showed mid-rolls with the highest completion rates of 97% for 15-second ads and 91% for 30-second ads.

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